Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

Yeah, I enjoyed this and am clearly a harcore Marvel stan in general but that review is pretty on point. Real rough around the edges in the home stretch. Don't know how much of that is attributable to questions that will be answered elsewhere (as I assumed at least one of the jobs of the Disney+ shows would be seeding the ground for future plot developments in the films) and how much is shit that's gonna be left to dangle.

oh god. i couldn't keep reading after a couple paragraphs of that film crit hulk blog. did i really read this kind of stuff in my salad days?

i rewatched the previous three with my brother who wasn't caught up, and still very happy with those episodes (Halloween, Spectrum/Agatha All Long and Wanda's between-the-films flashback ep)

series is still absolutely great overall, though I do have a bit of deflated feeling about the final episode, because it was impossible I suppose for all the questions to be answered (what happened to Jimmy Woo's witness? Monica's engineer friend was a total dud after all? that's Ralph?? what about X-Men??) and because the incredible final cameo that we were waiting for never materialized

Well ultimately that last bit was Bettany’s amazing troll and I respect it.

Bettany's troll was indeed great

really enjoyed bettany’s physicality as evil vision, very subtle changes in posture and expression really made the character feel distinct

Aw, all the TV bloggers are sad because they put all their eggs in one basket for a show that turned out to be B+ at best.

Anyway, first 7 episodes were terrific, last two were a letdown, but that's not a bad batting average. Great show! More like this.

Thinking (wondering) if Falcon & Winter Soldier will be typical action Marvel and then Loki something more interesting?

These shows (and Star Wars too) are like Kroll Show’s parodies of reality TV where every character no matter how minor or annoying gets a spin-off.

Is WandaVision the Joanie Loves Chachi of the MCU?

Couple of other nit-picky loose ends: why was Dottie one of two unidentified people in the hex? Why was Pietro, if he was really just a resident, not identified as such? If he was just a person, how was he given Pietro's super powers? Why, after the showdown in the town square, were all the people (and Monica, and the members of SWORD, plus their evil villain leader) still just apparently standing there all night? Has Monica even acknowledged the arrival of her new abilities? What has Agatha been up to for the last 300 years? Had Darcy just been sitting in that ice cream truck for days? If the hex is now gone, then where is Agatha? The difference between Vision and White Vision is that Vision has (some version of) the mind stone, but White Vision has the same powers as Vision, so what does the mind stone get Vision?

Didn't the necklace that Agnes put around his neck give him those powers?

I don’t understand what happened with white Vision at all.

I thought the necklace allowed her to control him, but if Agatha's powers were strong enough to give a dude powers strong enough to take out Monica with a flick, then what did Agatha even want?

White Vision ... flew away to float another day.

None of this detracts from the fact that at least 80% of this show was really good, which makes me hopeful for Falcon and the Winter Soldier (I keep wanting to call it Falcon and the Snowman) despite not caring one bit about Falcon or Winter Solider as characters.

But if white Vision is now good and has all his memories restored then why doesn’t Wanda know that and go after him? This whole thing was about her grief of losing him. Now he’s back. It seemed like a weird thing to just toss off

he had to use the bathroom for 30 years

Well given the tease at the very VERY end of the episode, there's maybe more to come on the whole family front.

yeah we're gonna get some multiverse shit

lol at Ralph Bohner tho

Next year on the Disney++ service, newly introduced: ten episode series called Bohner.

(I'm wondering if that was actually an old Evan Peters headshot they used!)

But if white Vision is now good and has all his memories restored then why doesn’t Wanda know that and go after him?

I thought when the camera moved inside the rustic cabin at the end it was gonna be WhiteVision holding the whistling kettle and then the big reveal is that the entire series was an extended infomercial for Hydra brand coffee

the best part of waking up
is fascism in your cup

Part of the problem with this (addressed by the Film Crit Hulk guy) is that there's really been no real setup for Scarlet Witch or her/its mythology, in this series or before, so a lot of this show, as an origin story, stays pretty muddled. Losing her brother plus losing Vision (twice) is what apparently causes Wanda to snap, gain the full Witch powers (why? how at the end of this did she suddenly know how to do stuff like make runes/do leather work? I guess they'll go into it), create a full (more than mere) simulation that includes not just Vision, not just (sort of) some version of her brother, but two loving children as well, and then resolves that by ... having her in essence kill them herself? You'd think that'd be even tougher, psychologically, than watching them die, but clearly she has gone off to Think About What She's Done. (And yeah, implication is that her kids spirits are currently in some other dimension or something, maybe next door to wherever she put Agatha.)

I loved how at the end White Vision, rather than phase through the roof, just dramatically busts through the glass skylight on the way out. It's like he figured, eh, we broke plenty of stuff already, fuck it.

do you want a montage that lasts 30 minutes for every skill she learns, Karate Kid style?

my 2cents is this ended up being deep true emotional story sabotaged by laser beam blasts and midair punch'em-ups... and vice versa! Everything after Agatha All Along was too absurd for me to take seriously and too serious for me to effortlessly enjoy.

― G.A.G.S. (Gophers Against Getting Stuffed) (forksclovetofu), Friday, 5 March 2021 16:12 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

otm. it just felt like it was cheapening the emotional heft they were going for. i would love a season of wanda just dealing with her grief and learning to let go, and another season of hilarious agatha hijinks and wanda learning she's a witch, but the mix felt really weird and i don't think benefited either story well.

xpost Yes, that would be awesome. With a song. Though, come on, it is a little weird to have her suddenly in full control of vast super witch powers she didn't even know she had until, like, an hour earlier.

Come to think of it ... what was Agatha all along? Next to nothing, right? Wanda's grief gave her new powers, Wanda created the hex, Wanda expanded the hex, Wanda controlled all the people, Wanda trapped them inside the hex, Wanda created Vision, Wanda created her kids, Wanda created the sitcom context. What did Agatha do? Control fake Pietro (and give him super powers, though on both counts, why?). And kill Sparky? As my viewing companion pointed out, what was up with the scene with the television set, with Agatha as director, if Agatha was neither creating nor controlling what we were seeing?

I honestly wonder if the pandemic interfered with other plans they had. Like, it was going to go another direction, or maybe another episode, but they had to quickly rewrite some stuff and wrap it up. I'd sure like to think that's the excuse.

Had Darcy just been sitting in that ice cream truck for days?

Are you being for real here?

As my viewing companion pointed out, what was up with the scene with the television set, with Agatha as director, if Agatha was neither creating nor controlling what we were seeing?

Do you mean the one-second joke shot in a non-diegetic comedy song?

The Tannhauser Gate/Bladerunner reference on the theatre marquee caught me by surprise. Has to be about whether a synthesized Vision is as real or as much or more than the original, I guess?

xpost No, there are a couple of times. One, a little into "Breaking the Fourth Wall," where you hear the director's voice, and Wanda is all "wait, why are you talking to me?" or something, but also toward the end of the flashback episode, "Previously On," where Wanda is in a TV studio lit by klieg lights and Agatha gives her a slow clap as the only member of the studio audience.

Agatha was trying to pump Wanda for information on the source of her power and find out how she created the hex. She was manipulating Wanda into giving up her secrets, which was made pretty explicit when she said something along the lines of “tell me how you did this and tell me the source of your power so I can take it” multiple times

I know that, but she did that in the guise of a director, which fits the Agatha After All reveal, but not the reveal that it was not Agatha after all.

Agatha All Along was a comedy song placed as a punchline, not a solemn promise of dramatic canonicity. Lots of things happen in the Hex parts of the show that do not make realistic sense.

Good point. Also, they are actors playing fictional superheroes with magic powers, so ... (waves hands).

lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ev02QDuVIAABMLU.jpg:small

lol, maybe not

this isn't a hard show to find narrative faults with, but by far the worst for me is that Wanda enslaved/tortured/terrorized an entire town of people for weeks on end - which Rambeau finds justified because hey, who among us wouldn't - and there's no narrative repercussions whatsoever! She doesn't actually apologize! In fact the payoff to Agatha's story is that Wanda proceeds to brainwash her anyway and then stash the lobotomized superdangerous magical destroyer inside the town she just finished terrorizing! With heroes like this, I tell you...

also it just takes me right outta the picture that, along with an energy crown and a fresh dye job, part of the apparent makeover that you get when you more fully bond with chaos energy is an Alexander McQueen bodysuit

I mean, Agatha makes it clear that Wanda / Scarlet Witch is prophesied to destroy the world, I don't think you're supposed to walk out of WandaVision thinking she's all good! She's actually kind of mean, that's part of what makes her character work!

lol, I wonder what Agatha was going to do with all that world-destroying power ...

not sure if i'd call enslaving an entire town of people to act out her fantasy "kinda mean" but from the superhero side, everyone's okay with it? I guess as long as Kat Denning gets her one-liner in, we're all copacetic.

Definitely got choked up when Wanda and her family walked into their home for the last time.

The only people who know exactly how everything went down are Wanda and Agatha, and Agatha didn’t care beyond wanting to siphon off that power for herself. Monica knows that Wanda was controlling everyone in the town with her grief but doesn’t really know how it started or how much of it was voluntary. White Vision doesn’t have any experience or memory from the Hex. Jimmy and Darcy just know Wanda is an Avenger and are giving her the benefit of the doubt based on that. The townspeople know Wanda’s grief was overwhelming and controlling them and are terrified of her. SWORD is also terrified of her. The FBI are going off of Jimmy’s lead. The ending felt very much like they are ultimately setting Wanda up to be the initial antagonist for the next Doctor Strange movie.

Like, I don’t see how you watch especially the post-credits scene and think “ah yes, here is an obvious, unambiguously good person doing something wholly innocuous”

if you're talking to me, i don't think i said anything of the sort? My suggestion is that the emotional ending is sabotaged by the character we are meant to empathize with being a monster in leather boots.

xxxxp Who is everyone here? Not a lot of people know what's happened.

(I mean in the MCU, though by volume that's probably true in this thread)

Very much fanwank.

I'd argue that fanwank would involve something more obscure than "two films that took in 2 billion dollars between them"?

DJPotm

i definitely think you can empathize with wanda while still thinking what she did was wrong, or even monstrous. the problem with this episode is that the mcu has no idea how to do endings, and they basically shunted aside all the reckoning for a later date. or maybe wanda won’t reckon with what she does and this is more of a supervillain origin story than we thought.

Given what they did with Patsy frickin Walker on Jessica Jones (again acknowledging that previous Marvel tv shows apparently no longer count), anything is possible.

If I had to make a prediction, I would bet Dr. Strange 2 starts with him doing some relatively light and zippy problem solving, but then sensing a grave disturbance in the force. Cut to Wanda using her powers to try and bring back her kids. Dr. Strange interrupts ("If you do this, it comes at a huge price, you will unleash the powers of Booga Booga and put the whole universe in danger, etc"), maybe they fight a bit, she does it anyway and half succeeds, then indeed unleashes the cursed power of Booga Booga. Then Dr. Strange will say "if you want your kids back, and to right the universe, we must first find a way to return Booga Booga back to the magic book." Or something. Maybe they'll go to Agatha for advice. Ends with the kids back, Wanda chastened, and Booga Booga back in the book. Except he isn't totally back in the book, because he's Mephisto, and he says "excellent, everything is going according to plan, bwahaha!" And then he turns back into Ralph/Evan Peters and just disappears into the crowd.

Question for the nerds, would Dr. Strange be aware of Agatha, or the mythic Scarlet Witch and/or its connection to Wanda?

BTW, looking at the original Phase 4 chart really underscores how much covid has screwed up their grand plans:

https://consequenceofsound.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Marvel-Phase-4.jpeg?quality=80

previous Marvel tv shows apparently no longer count

Is this true? Have they relegated certain stuff to “Legends” status?

Jessica Jones was not real